I Love Walt Disney

I am a huge fan of Walt Disney and I often think people really don't appreciate the marvel that he was. Here are some interesting points about someone who is the biggest oscar winner, parent, visionary, and somehow who helped create the animal rights movement.

The Impact of Snow White

According to Neal Gabler, author of the leading Walt Disney biography, Snow White may be the most watched film of all time. For nearly 80 years, generations have watched Snow White all around the world. Do you know anyone who hasn't? What movie can say that?

It's hard to imagine today what an impact Snow White made when it was released. Normally when a film is amazing it gets nominated for an Oscar. Not so with Snow White. The film was so original and so amazing the Academy actually created a one time Oscar for the movie along with seven little oscars.

Clark Gable, someone proud of being a man who never cried, was apparently sobbing during the movie.

The Princess Story

I often feel bad when I hear people accusing Disney of promoting the princess agenda. This is because Walt's point of view had to do more with escaping abuse and neglect through having a kind heart and good character than being saved by a prince. Walt himself grew up in a abusive and neglectful household. The idea of escaping from that was a story that always appealed to him.

Walt in general was not a fan of princess films, but sadly it was what made the studio the most money, while his more artistic pieces, like Fantasia didn't. The success of movies like Sleeping Beauty actually lead to Walt being disenfranchised with movies and encouraged him the direction of his theme parks.

The princess battle is one the studio has continued to wrestle with, because audiences seem to crave it, but the message is not always the best. The Disney Studio has worked hard to undermine the princess theme over and over again, the most recent and creative attempt in Frozen.

The Birth of Animal Rights

It was because of Walt's background of abuse and neglect he allowed himself to escape into the fantasy world. Growing up on a farm, he gravitated towards connecting with animals. Walt's animation personified animals in a way that people had not seen before. It's so common today it's hard to imagine it otherwise. Walt showed people that animals have feelings. Bambi is often sited as an anti-hunting film.

Or consider the nature documentary that is so popular today. Those did not always exist and people would have thought they were boring. Walt however saw it differently. In 1947, Walt shot a movie about seals. It is now considered perhaps the first nature documentary. Many people laughed at him and told him the idea was boring and silly. RKO refused to even show it in theaters. Nonetheless Walt moved forward on the film against everyone's judgment. It was so entertaining that it won an Oscar and set the stage for nature documentaries as a genre.

How Many Oscars?

Katherine Hepburn was one of the most successful actresses and has won more oscars than anyone else: four. Walt Disney won 26. In 1953 alone he won 4, the most ever in a single year.

Hello Julie Andrews

Walt selected Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins. This doesn't sound too remarkable until you understand the story. Prior to Poppins, Julie Andrews was the lead in My Fair Lady on Broadway. When the film was made into a movie, Julie Andrews was one of the only cast members not to be selected to play in the Hollywood version of the movie because she was considered unattractive. Audrey Hepburn was selected instead. During the Oscars, My Fair Lady swept winning 8 oscars, except for Best Actress which went to Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins. This cemented her Andrew's role in future movies such as the Sound of Music.

Paying for Disney Land as a Passionate Father

It was Walt's love of his children that inspired Disney Land. He loved playing with his children but found traditional parks a bit boring for adults. So he dreamed up Disney Land a place to support the family being together and having fun together. It was the first of it's kind.

Paying for Disney Land was a problem, but he found a creative way. He signed a contract with ABC to produce the Wonderful World of Disney as a regular TV series. Rather than using the money to create a show, he funneled it into the making of Disney Land. The show was basically a behind the scenes of building the park and the Disney studio, and as also a tool to generating publicity for the park and movies. In essence ABC paid for the building of Disneyland and promoting Disney.

Disney World: A City Not An Amusement Park

Have you ever seen the original plans for Disney World? You should. Watch it here.

Neal Gabler

Do you want to learn more? Read more from Neal Gabler's biography Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.

Flip and Tumble Produce Bags

I love saving the environment and I a big proponent of having your cake and eating it too. Flip and Tumble produce bags are a great example of this. I've been using them for years. They eliminate the waste of plastic disposable bags. They look good. They feel good. They store well in your refrigerator. They reduce your waste so you don't have to take your trash out so often. I buy mine on Amazon. Flip and Tumble.

Macroni and Cheese Italian Style Sketchnote Style

I was getting into a discussion with someone about using the process of Sketch Notes to deal with recipes. I like to sketch recipes before I follow them. This is an example of Macaroni and Cheese Italian Style from Cook's Illustrated own Jack Bishop and his cookbook a Year in the Vegetarian Kitchen.

Basically the recipe involves mixing the cheeses, cooked pasta, and a béchamel sauce. I like to sketch recipes and start with the core concept at the center. In this case, the core is mixing the three major components together.

Above the core, I like to put the prepare work, and below the finish work. I hope it helps or inspires. It certainly is tasty!

Why Do We Need to Receive Empathy?

I have come from a very abusive and neglectful background that resembled slavery and so many simple things that are obvious to others are not to me. One of those is "why do we need to receive empathy?" I'm so used to paying attention the needs of others over my own, I often find myself unwittingly having people in my life that our not empathetic or caring. They tend to not like when I seek their input on feelings or are dismissive.

I have searched the internet and am well read, but I have not found anything on why do need to receive empathy.

I have had a tendency to feel guilty about expecting empathy from others. I think that needing others to care about me or pay attention to me somehow makes me "needy" or "too sensitive." It also implies that I depend upon others for their approval. All these are bad things or are they?

As humans, why do we seek empathy from others? Clearly we are social creatures, and we need others. It is easy to believe that needing others is a sign of weakness because needing others makes us vulnerable and we can get hurt when we are rejected. It's easier to say "We should take responsibility for our feelings" rather than admit we need others.

Wanting empathy for others, I have discovered, is a good thing for them. We want empathy most when we are experiencing strong emotions, and we tend to want it from people we trust and care about. When we have strong emotions we struggle to understand what exactly it is that we are feeling and how do we want to deal with that in the context ourselves and the world at large. We want to clarify our feelings and gain perspective so that we can behave wisely.

If I am angry at an employee because I believe they are not respecting me, that's important. How I deal with that affects a lot of people: my company, the finances, the employee and their family, and my own family. I want empathy because it helps me act responsibly. When others can relate to my feelings and enter my emotional world, what they are doing is helping me better understand what is going on within me and how that affects both myself and the world at large. This is in society's best interest.

In fact what I have learned, is that expecting empathy from others is actually respectful to others.

Starting a Business without Financing

I've never liked the idea of financing a business. Why does a business need financing? I mean money's not free and it has to get paid back eventually, and with interest. It's always lurking over your shoulder. It's a balance sheet liability that makes it hard to sell the company or even give it to your children. Plus, finding money is hard work that takes away from what the business is really trying to do.

At the end of the day if the business is so good it has to solve the problems of not enough sales and too many expenses. Financing makes it easy to avoid the real problems.

Consider JSA Technologies an Internet banking company that works with colleges and universities. It was financed by customers. They wanted to be on the Internet so badly that they were willing to pay upfront. Big name clients too. The first product was not so hot, but it was good enough and they keep building on it. Now they are growing faster than ever.

In regards to financing, we are talking about debt with no revenue attached. Having customers pay you upfront is fine, even desirable, because assuming that you didn't over promise, then at least you have guaranteed revenues at the end, as well as references.

I tend to look at financing this way, if someone had a cure for cancer would financing be a problem? People would probably be in line and pay upfront, even just for the hope. A company's product or sales technique should be so good, that it can sell before it's completed. If that's not possible, then maybe it's not that great.

One of the main allures of financing is that it gives you the money to build your product. Unfortunately until you sell the product you'll never really know if the market wants it. Even with the best products, it often just takes time, or there are other weird market forces at play. I know I tend to drift into fantasies like Kevin Costner, "if I build it they will come." I imagine being done and everyone coming rushing, and me being rich and throwing money in the air. Then I wake up.

Financing can also play into our insecurities and psychology. We are afraid to admit that we are good enough as we are. We are afraid to release the less than perfect product. Sometimes though, it's actually our openness and vulnerability which makes us trustable and builds clients. Being good enough doesn't mean sacrificing quality, but accepting that we are okay as we are, and it's because we respect ourselves we keep trying to do better.

Every time I go onto Facebook I am always reminded that despite all their money the site often doesn't work properly for me. I'm sure you can find plenty of successful products that fall short.

In some sense this ties into sales. I don't like sales, although I can do it. It's not that I don't like people or that I am trying to be someone I am not, but it's hard. It's hard to put yourself out there.

Financing can make it easy to turn a blind eye to sales. We can justify our lack of sales by saying our website is not ready, the brochure is not good enough, we don't have a sales person, or we don't have business cards. You don't really need any of these things.

I had a friend teach me this lesson. For one of my first clients I was so desperate for business that I sold myself too cheap. I didn't have a website. I didn't have business cards. I didn't have a brochure. I did have a signed contract for $15K with a Fortune 500 company. Proud of myself, I told my friend. He said "What?" He immediately picked up the phone and called the company, without my permission, and said "This contract is worth at least $75K. Why are you paying him $15K? You're taking advantage of him. Seriously?" The customer ended up paying me $75K, even though they didn't have to. The quality of sales.

In the most complex circumstances I find there is a way to get money. Sometimes there is a great deal of money required upfront particularly when dealing with heaving machinery or very complex technology.

I have a friend who started a company selling extremely complex machines used in extracting natural resources (I'm keeping his details private). There was huge upfront R&D required but he did it without financing. How? He tried to put together a board of directors. The directors started to get a little competitive and one of them went all in. This may sound like financing, but the investor needed this technology to grow his business. There was a built-in revenue source. After two years the company was bought for deep figures.

When I started my first company without financing, everyone laughed at me. I don't tend to be a confident or charismatic person, and they were like "you?" Instead they counseled me on "get bigger or go home," and how VC was mandatory. Today, they are all gone with the exception of one, and he conceded that getting investment had been a bad choice for him. He became a slave to his investors and could never really invest in making the company what he wanted. He did end up doing quite well, but not without his share of stress that he said he would have rather done without.

Not having money can be scary, but it can also be a good thing because you can use it to build exclusivity. Do you really need to be as big as possible? Is it better to limit what you offer and have people waiting in demand? Are the other advantages to not having money? Like perhaps getting a job and increasing your opportunities, financial security, and thinking more clearly?

Poor pricing is another way in which financing can get muddled. It's easy to sell too cheap because you have the cash, or too high because you are over confident. Or perhaps you're scared and you compromise and lose sight of the real value of your product. Eventually these things can catch up to you.

In some sense, I know I may be tending to dogmatic in my view on financing, because clearly there are companies that can make it with financing, but for me, that's too hard and too much stress. Perhaps that's the heart of it for me. Why do I want to do this in the first place? What do I expect to achieve? While the fantasy of fame and fortune is nice, I would rather have a modest business that is profitable, low stress, and allows me to invest in having fun and spending time with my family, and having deep meaningful relationships. Maybe no one will recognize me. I don't care. In this way I agree with Timothy Ferris of the Four Hour Work Week.

At the end of the day I rarely find a compelling reason for financing. Maybe others do, but it doesn't work for me.

Human In Human Out: Connecting With People

This article is definitely in part thanks to my speech coach, Kristen Curran of the Speech Improvement Company who I've been working with for years. She has been one of the most helpful people in my career over the years.

One of the main principles of conversation that she reminds me of frequently, is the human in, human out, conversation style. When we want to connect with people, especially in a professional manner, we want to start the conversation on the human level, talk a little about business, and end it on the human level.

Generally this means that we start talking about non-business things, like "How are the kids?" or "What are you doing for the holidays?" After that, then, we can segway into business stuff, "Hey, what do you think about that proposal I sent you?" When that's done, we can end with "Thank you. Make sure you enjoy some chocolate for me while you travel in Switzerland!"

For example, I am starting a new business selling coffee machines, so I asked her "when I talk to people I am confused how to talk about my business. I don't want to bore them with what I am doing, but simultaneously, they might be interested. I also don't want to be pushy."

Her tip was basically that I should keep the conversation human, and interject only a little business. In part this depends upon the context of course. At my home I might give people a cup of coffee; however, if was talking to a parent at my childrens' school and they ask the perennial questions "So what do you do?" I can reply in some manner like "I'm a retired entrepreneur. I am starting a new business around coffee. I am a huge coffee fanatic. I traveled all over the world and I fell in love with the coffee of Switzerland, made by this special machine called a Jura. I loved it so much I decided to start a business around it. Do you like coffee?"

The conversation is initially human, I interject a little business, but in a human way. Then I can close it with something like "Do you like coffee?" to try to keep it human and give the person an exit strategy to talk about themselves. I avoid pushing the business. If they want to know more of course I can oblige.

The deeper the relationship, the more time we can stay in the business realm.

Twitter

I've found these rules particularly useful in the world of social media as well. I have been lurking for a while and watching who seems to be more successful and who isn't. Clearly fame and entertainment is a major factor--look at Ashton Kutcher--however, when I look at the people who have built a following, I notice a major trend. They keep it human.

I see so many people venture into social media, and they use it as the next spamming tool. I find these people annoying and I imagine I am not alone in my sentiment. I am surprised by some people who are actually pretty savvy in the tech or designs worlds who seem to miss this too.

In the case of Twitter, we are communicating with the general public, and as a result, we want to keep the conversation more human, and only interject business on occasion. If you want to see examples of this, look at some of the people whom I've grown to admire such as Laura Kalbag @laurakalbag, Mike Rohde @rohdesign, and Jessica Hische @jessicahische.

For more reading, I recommend Laura Kalbag's article at http://laurakalbag.com/open-for-business/.

Feelings Card Game

Feelings Game For Children (or Adults)

I had a long talk with my daughter about why we have timeout. Ultimately the reason is that we want to teach emotional regulation. The healthiest people tend to be able to recognize the differences between feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. They understand what their unmet wants are, and they know how to take responsibility for what they can do to help themselves self regulate.

Much of this comes from my experience as a patient at McLean Hospital, Harvard's psychiatric facility, and seeing how much people can be helped by understanding and practicing these simple concepts. One of the main premises is that we cannot change our feelings, but we can control our thoughts and behaviors through our choices and that these can influence feelings.

These are difficult concepts for a child. So I thought I might attempt to make a game/activity that might help teach this better. This is just a quick brainstorm, so please be kind, but this is the idea. The game consists of a series of cards and the child has to lay out them depending upon how they are feeling.

1. Stage 1: Identify Feelings and Unmet Wants
2. Stage 2: Identify Thoughts Behind Feelings
3. Stage 3: Identify Behaviors That These Feelings Motivate in You
4. Stage 4: Identify Ways to Self Regulate That Show You Take Responsibility

What do you think?